This invention relates to a medical treatment system, and more particularly to a safety device for an implement for carrying out medical treatment during observation, for example, a high frequency electric knife probe or laser knife probe attached to an endoscope apparatus.
A known medical treatment system attached to an endoscope apparatus includes a high frequency electric knife probe and a laser knife probe. Such probe is inserted into a coeliac cavity of a patient from a control section of an endoscope, a and medical operation is carried out, while the coeliac cavity is observed by the endoscope. In addition to an endoscope apparatus, a microsurgery device is put to practical use which applies a high frequency knife while observation is made by an operation type microscope.
If erroneously actuated, these medical treatment devices rise to serious danger to a patient, and consequently never fail to be provided with a safety device. Various proposals have already been advanced with respect to the safety device as set forth in, for example, Japanese utility model disclosures 50-58,590, 55-12,942 and 55-37,610. However, these proposals relate to the physical damage or displacement of a medical treatment device. To date, no proposal has been made with respect to protecting against an erroneous operation of a medical treatment device. Therefore, it has often happened that the erroneous operation of the above-mentioned medical treatment device by the user led to the undesirable excision or damage by burning of a normal coeliac tissue of a patient around an affected spot, and further the user himself suffered an injury by being exposed to, for example, laser beams.
It is accordingly the object of this invention to provide a medical treatment system provided with a safety device which causes the system to be actuated only when a medical treatment is carried out.